Thursday, April 2, 2015

Jack Oleck Dips His Toe in the Charlton Waters

As I was skimming the Fifties Charlton titles for Carl Memling stories,
I had Dick Wood's handful jump out at me, since his interjections are so
distinctive. Another writer not known to have worked there,
whose distinction lies in his captions, got my
attention with another four stories. Jack Oleck poses rhetorical
questions and otherwise dwells on the characters' bad choices with
specific
phrases I'll go into in later posts on his work elsewhere.

I was concentrating on the crime and horror/mystery titles, so Oleck may have
a few war or romance scripts at Charlton too. All four stories here are
drawn by Steve Ditko.

Thanks, Nick. I wonder where Oleck was between 1959 and 1969 when, as far as I can see, he was out of comics--he had one novel published in '59 (Messalina--one paperback edition had a cover by James Bama) and then, who knows?

Nick, I am Jack's daughter and can tell you where he was! Jack raised 3 kids with his wife and introduced the Interior Decorators News during that period. He lived out on Long Island, commuting to NYC on the LIRR daily. He published a number of books including Messalina and Theodora, a reflection of his interest in Greek and Roman history, as well as at least one television drama and a number of spin offs from popular movies Eventually, he returned to comics, writing under his own name and under some pen names

blogspot ate my comments again - so this will be shorter. Olecks's Interior Decorator News - later Interior Decorator and Contract News is listed in Ayer's as starting in 1957. Ran at least ten years (if Ayers is correct about the start date). Price is listed as free, so I would assume a controlled circulation publication supported by advertising.

I'd think that the Ditko art is 1957 work, and so this is Oleck working directly for Charlton. Whether Charlton received any scripts among the ready-to-print pages in the various other companies' inventories is a good question; I've only recognized the inventory stuff by the art.